


Keep me Company

by i_amthatis



Category: Hat Films - Fandom, The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Truckers, Kissing, M/M, No Sex, Smoking, but there is kissing, introspective self indulgent wank, song: Drive Me Crazy (Orville Peck)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26392486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_amthatis/pseuds/i_amthatis
Summary: “You know how much fucking time I spend thinking about you?”Ross didn’t know how to answer. Just shifted the scuffed toe of his boot through the slushy snow, drawing a line he wanted desperately to fling himself across.“Drives me crazy. Nothing else to think about.”
Relationships: Ross Hornby/Chris Lovasz
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Keep me Company

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title: Song fic? In MY 2020? More likely than you'd think....

“God I hate the snow,” he said. 

“‘S not so bad.” Sips looked up at the spiraling flakes, fragments of ice throwing themselves through the dark. “Least not when we don’t have places to be.” 

He spoke around his cigarette, not taking hands out of the pockets of his jacket.

Ross shivered, and longed for the dry rush of hot air off his engine. But Sips was out here, stuck at the same shitty exit ramp he was by dumb luck guess or miracle, and the deeper warmth that satisfied something in him just standing next to Sips, speaking to Sips without risk of being overheard: that was worth the damp of melted snow in the cuffs of his jeans. The ache in his ears, uncovered by a hat. The growing stiffness of his already stiff legs.

“Yeah, but we do have places to be. And this shit isn't letting up any time soon.”

Sips made a wordless sound of agreement. He leaned back against his truck. Ross joined him, facing the dark of the empty highway with the warm metal at his back. 

“Probably catch some rest here, wait for this to let up. Or daylight at least. You?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Took a bit of a rest just before this shit blew up. Ought to press on, maybe.”

He didn’t want to, really. Ross was tired, and there was only so much caffeine could do to keep his edge against the spitting snow and ice in his windshield. A static without sound, frenetic visions to match the desperate clutch of his hands gripped on the wheel. Even after years, snow was ever unpredictable. A normal person would be at home in this weather. A normal man would be asleep with his wife, nestled under piles of down comforters with the early snow outside no more than an accessory to don with the change of season. 

Thoughts like that were dangerous. Ross knew what he was, and there was some peace in that. In his life being defined by wheels and roads, detachment from being a fixed point on display for judgement.

“Been a while since we’ve crossed paths. September was it?”

“Yeah, had to take some time off. Deal with a few things back home.”

“Everything okay?” 

Ross knew it wasn’t. But he asked anyways, hoping for truth and not a tall tale. 

“Nah. But it’s over.”

Sips withdrew a hand from denim to flick the butt into the snow. He rubbed his eyes with a long sigh.

“Tell you about it some other time.”

“Whenever. You just give me a holler, anytime Sips.”

Sips nodded, lost in some thought that was too far away for Ross to reach. When he spoke again it was without looking at Ross, quiet and roughened by cigarette smoke. Like he was revealing one of the secret truths of the universe, shrouded in the snow.

“You know how much fucking time I spend thinking about you?”

Ross didn’t know how to answer. Just shifted the scuffed toe of his boot through the slushy snow, drawing a line he wanted desperately to fling himself across. 

“Drives me crazy. Nothing else to think about.” Sips stuck another cigarette between his lips, the flickering fragile flame of his lighter casting light across his cheeks, shadowed by the brim of his hat from the steady orange of the sodium lamp high above them. 

“I’m nobody though.”

“Bullshit. Nobody’s nobody.” 

He offered Ross the cigarette. Ross didn’t smoke, not really, only after he’d had a few drinks and could bum one. He took it. Passed it back, holding his breath on the smoke against the numb almost lost feeling of their fingers touching in the exchange. 

“Sorry, for bugging you. Your thoughts.”

“It’s not like that Ross.” Sips looked at him, eyes dark and piercing. Ross reached for the cigarette even as Sips extended his hand to offer it. “Not like that.” 

Ross wanted desperately to deny it in some way. The truth of what he knew behind Sips’s words. About Sips, about himself. That truth found, identified, and seen in each other. Somehow learned between a raised hand in passing, eyes met in a mirror, voices on radios that sounded more like they were transmitted by a toaster than receiver, and the rare and precious times facing each other over a diner booth. Or stood together beside the highway.

Sips took the cigarette back. Took a last fleeting drag before tossing it to join the other, buried in snow.

“Think about you, too.” Ross said, before he’d even put the feeling into words enough for himself to understand he spoke them. “It’s nice seeing you on the road, even if we’re not talking. You going my way.”

“Yeah.”

They lapsed into silence, again. 

Ross wondered if someday he’d stop talking altogether. He’d go to pay for coffee, he could see it now, feel it. The moment where the attendant would ask him where he was headed, where’s home, and he’d open his mouth but no word would come out. All the clamor in his head would have jammed itself so tight in his windpipe there was no longer any hope of speaking again. He squeezed his eyes shut, bit the fraying skin of his lip until it tore and the sharp taste of his own blood hit his tongue. 

“Hey.” Sips’s hand touched his arm. 

Ross’s eyes snapped open again, finding Sips’s. The hand stayed on his elbow, gripped tighter, as if Ross might bolt and drive away, hammer down, were Sips not holding onto him. As if Sips would disappear himself if he didn’t hold on so tight.

Despite the flurry of unspoken words surrounding them on the wind, Ross cracked a smile, and saw it matched with a crooked grin on Sips’s lips. He edged closer, their legs and shoulders touching.

“What are we doing?” he asked Sips in a whisper nearly lost to the night. He knew, but needed something more. Something concrete to tell him that too many miles of road hadn’t driven him crazy, crazy with his own thoughts. That this was real, not just something he wanted to be.

Sips wavered. A sway that matched the surge of desire Ross felt to finally press himself up against this man he barely knew. 

“Dammit Ross. I’m shit at this.”

“Me too,” he paused, ran his tongue over the split in his lip that still stung. “Can I kiss you?”

“Fuck.” Sips seemed to flinch, hiding his mouth with a hand.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have-”

“No, fuck Ross. Yes. Just- Not here?” Sips shot a look over his shoulder, towards the other rigs pulled off with them. He jerked his chin up toward his cab.

Ross followed him. 

Sips tossed his hat onto the passenger seat, sitting instead on the bed mostly covered with a rumpled crocheted blanket over a deep grey comforter. Dozens of squares in a rainbow of colors smoothed beneath Sips’s hand. Suddenly unsure of himself, Ross looked away from Sips as he bent to the little fridge.

He touched the green threads of the graduation tassel hanging from the side of the CB radio on the ceiling, accompanied by an air freshener. It was cleaner than Ross’s own cab, or simply less cluttered. Absent of photos of family or friends, a small calendar stood alone. Dates crossed off with a variety of pens and pencils. Several books occupied the passenger seat beneath Sips’s abandoned hat, and Ross caught a glimpse of flaking metallic text on cracked spines. Ross turned back to Sips. 

Wordlessly, Sips held up a tiny can of diet Coke. Ross shook his head.

“There’s tea, if you’d rather.”

“Tea?” Ross couldn’t help himself asking the incredulous question. He bit back his smile without much success.

Sips opened the cabinet, and pulled out a kettle with a cord dangling from beneath the handle. 

“Whoever invented this sucker deserves a fucking medal. Worth every penny and then some.” He poured water from a gallon jug into it. “Does take for fucking ever to boil though, nothing can be perfect.”

“Well, if you’re making some already.” 

“You got it big boy.” 

Sips got back up, and in the space of a moment he was so close to Ross that Ross could feel his warmth. He held himself perfectly still as Sips plugged in the ridiculous kettle to the cigarette lighter. Sips straightened, as much as he could without knocking his head on the ceiling, but before he could retreat to his seat on the bed again Ross grabbed the front of his jacket.

“Sips.”

He took a shuddering breath beneath Ross’s hand. Ross looked in Sips’s eyes, trying to ask the same question that he had moments before without saying it again. Voicing the desire as words once was already too much. If he said it again one of them, both of them, couldn’t withstand it.

He closed the last remaining inches between them.

Sips’s mouth was warm, all of him was. Alternately soft and rough in the textures of fabric, stubble, and hair still mussed from the hat. Ross felt more than heard Sips’s choked off groan in the split second before his lips parted beneath Ross’s tongue. His hand found the small of Ross’s back, mirroring the arm Ross had around his waist. Ross pulled back, just long enough to open his eyes again and check Sips’s face for the change of heart, the disappointment, the revulsion he was sure would be there.

Sips looked at him, faint smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“Now I gotta think about that for at least a thousand miles.”

Ross shook his head, pushing Sips towards the bed as he joined their mouths again. They half fell as Sips’s knees hit the edge of the mattress, undoing any of Sips’s efforts to keep the bedspread tidy as they tumbled together. Their legs slotted together as Ross gently pushed Sips down, rolling on top of him. 

Fingers dug into his hips, Sips’s hands beneath the jacket, beneath the T-shirt that had come irrevocably untucked from Ross’s jeans. He hummed his approval, ducking his head and kissing Sips again. 

It was easy. It was sinfully easy, the way their bodies fit against one another as Ross pressed down against Sips. He broke away from fervently pressing their mouths together to instead kiss down Sips’s neck. It brought a gratifying gasp from Sips when he let his teeth press into the ridge of collarbone exposed by the askew collar of Sips’s shirt. He returned to Sips’s mouth, tongues sliding together as Ross’s hand sought the buckle on Sips’s belt. His fingers brushed metal, fumbled for release. 

Sips tensed, pulling back from Ross as best he could beneath the other man.

“Ross, don’t-” he closed his eyes, and Ross almost regretted it all, everything that had led up to this moment so suddenly chilled as a haunted look slipped out before Sips could squeeze his eyelids shut. 

“Please,” he said. 

“Of course, Jesus Sips, we don’t-” He withdrew hands that trembled, suddenly. Putting his palm against Sips’s cheek to still the minute shaking of his fingers as much as to comfort Sips. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. Don’t apologize, please.” Sips let out a sigh, leaning his head into Ross’s hand. 

“Alright?”

“Yeah. Just kiss me.”

Ross obeyed. He held back the urgency that screamed in him, begging to take this hard and fast. The kissing turned tentative, Ross held poised to withdraw at the smallest sign of reluctance from Sips. 

The tension seeped out of Sips, as quickly as it had come. He relaxed under Ross, nudging his shoulder to urge Ross onto his back. He gave Ross a lingering kiss, more chaste than their previous. Sips propped himself up on his elbow, absently threading his fingers through Ross’s hair.

“Will you stay a while, keep me company?”

Instead of an answer, Ross pulled Sips back down. He wrapped his arms around Sips’s shoulders and leaned their heads together. He hoped Sips understood. The familiar vice of emotion had taken hold of him again, and his words were lost to him. He nodded, cradled Sips’s head as if he could put all the unstoppable force of his emotion into that one gentle touch.

Sips’s fingers traced his ribs through cotton, and he shifted himself deeper into Ross’s embrace. 

**Author's Note:**

> Author has been listening to way too much Orville Peck and wrote this in a fit. This fic is completely and utterly inspired by [this song ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3JOEeG5PM4). 
> 
> Been listening to his music because a friend linked me "Hope to Die" and said "this seems like something you'd like". As it turns out, he was right. This song came up while I was consuming the entirety of Orville Peck's discography, and I just couldn't stop thinking about the line "never thought I'd learn to love the snow".
> 
> What could that possibly mean? I came back to it over and over. I decided that, as sometimes happens, snow would mean the roads were too slick to safely drive. An implication that I carried further, snow would always be something the speaker of the songs would curse as a driver, unless there were a reason to be glad of being stuck on a random stretch of highway. Like your star crossed long distance trucker lover.
> 
> So thanks Mr. Peck, for writing music that gripped me by the throat and wouldn't let me go until I'd gotten this out. 
> 
> This is of course colored by my own melancholy, the way things in life never are so easy as a magical kiss in the snow and then a perfect fuck to go with it. So I may have driven this in a direction away from most fic tropes for the benefit of smut, and I hope you'll forgive my self indulgence. But fuck it you know? Write the navel gazey trash you wish to see in fandom amirite?
> 
> If you're interested in some further reading about long-haul truck drivers:  
> [ Here are some](https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1398&context=mcnair) [interesting articles](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/career/a53375/long-haul-truck-driver-career/) (And [ wikipedia ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_driver) pulls through yet again with an excellent page too).
> 
> Any errors and inconsistencies and blatant bullshit is my own. 
> 
> I promise I've been working on some other things besides this. Lots of unfinished stuff I prod at for a bit, ad a few words too, take a few words away from. Fandom is quiet, and I don't think any of you are surprised by that at this point in the game. So I doubt the lack of content from a random account with four works garnered much notice but hey. Figured I would give you all still here a non-update on the life and times. I swear the space fic isn't abandoned, I just haven't quite figured out where I want to go and have been a bit stuck. Stalled because it hasn't told me what it wants to be yet.
> 
> It's hard to find space to be creative when working insane long hours in the midst of, well. You know. 
> 
> Hope you're all hanging in there, as best you can. Its a rough world out there. Enjoy this weird little one off. Its been a long year. So have some company.


End file.
